Introduction to the History of Religions Handbooks on the...

905. Divination is the science that seeks to discover the will of the supernatural Powers by means of the observation of phenomena. Men desire to learn the causes of present and past misfortunes and the story of the future, that they may know at any moment what is the best course to pursue. The underlying supposition is that these things are indicated by the appearances and movements of the various objects of the world. It is in these phenomena that the purposes of superhuman forces become visible to man; the gods, it is held, cannot but so reveal themselves (for they produce all phenomena), and man's task is to discover the laws of phenomenal revelation. The question of the motive in this revelation is not distinctly raised, but it is taken for granted that the Powers are willing to help man by guiding his uncertain footsteps; their attitude is so far friendly—they belong in feeling to the human community.1590

Divination has in common with magic the assumption of the unity of the world and its control by law, and the search for divine activity in the facts of life. But the two differ essentially in their aims. Divination seeks to learn the divine will in order to be guided; magic studies divine action in order to imitate it and accomplish divine results. Divination is an inquirer, and its virtue is obedience; magic is an investigator, and its virtue is achievement. Both are self-seeking, but divination is the more reverent and allies itself more easily with religion. But both tend to become corrupt and decadent, and their rôles are determined from time to time by the conditions of the communities in which they are found.1591

906. The organization of divination resembles that of magic in several respects. It comes to have its special functionaries, into whose hands all its authority falls. The divinatory power (like the magical) comes to a man sometimes as a gift of nature (that is, of a god) or in some mysterious external way, sometimes as a result of a course of training in which the significance of the various signs is learned. It is sometimes a property of a clan or a family and descends from father to son, always, however, under the condition of instruction of the young by the old. The diviner, like the magician, sometimes performs various ceremonies for the purpose of bringing himself into relation with the gods, and his utterances are frequently given in an ecstatic condition. In this condition he is said in some instances (as among the Todas1592) to speak a language not his own, with which in his ordinary state of mind he is unacquainted, or to utter words that are not understood either by himself or by others. Ecstasy means possession by the deity; the interpretation of the diviner's words, which, in the ecstatic condition, are the words of a spirit or a god, is sometimes left to the bystanders, or, if unintelligible to them, must be recovered by the seer himself when he returns to his normal condition.

907. The highest development of ecstasy is found in the prophet proper. Originally the prophet was a foreteller and acted under the inspiration of a god, a divine seizure that was allied to madness. The ravings of the savage shaman1593 are repeated in the ravings of Cassandra and in the excited utterances and bodily exhaustion of the early Hebrew prophets.1594 A nobler use of ecstasy is exhibited in the youth of Byblos, who rescued an unfortunate Egyptian envoy from insult and secured him honorable treatment.1595 The more advanced thought tended to abandon the abnormal state of the diviner and make him simply a recipient of divine knowledge by the favor of a god—the gods came to choose thoughtful men instead of beasts as their intermediaries.1596 The Hebrew prophets whose utterances have been preserved, from Amos onward, are men of insight, essentially critics of the national life, and moral watchmen; but features of the old conception of divinatory power continue for some time to attach to them.1597

908. The differentiation of functions between magician, diviner, and priest appears to have taken place at a comparatively early period, though it is probable that in the earliest times all these characters might be united in a single person. As soon as an organized religion is established the priest acquires his specific function as intermediator between men and gods, often, however, retaining the power of discovering the will of the deity.1598 Magic, as we have seen, tends to become an unsocial and hostile thing, and the magician is in later times punished or discountenanced by public opinion. The diviner, on the other hand, has generally retained possession of his public for the reason that he is in sympathy with the gods of the community and his work is held to be wholly friendly. In all stages of religious development, except the very highest, he has been recognized by public opinion and by law as a part of the religious constitution of society and has often attained great civil and political power.1599 Among civilized peoples he comes to be a man of learning, acquainted with many things besides the mere signs of the will of the gods.

909. Divinatory signs may be grouped in various classes according as they belong to the outer world or to men's inward experiences, and according as they present themselves without or with preparation by man. Outward signs in ordinary occurrences which, so far as human initiative is concerned, are accidental may be called, for convenience, "omens." Uncommon occurrences may be called, if they appear in the forms of men and animals, "prodigies," and if they are seen in the physical world, "portents." These designations are arbitrary, and sometimes two or more of them may be appropriate for the same event. Inward signs are dreams, revelations in the ecstatic state, and prophetic inspirations.1600 We may begin with divination from the observation of external objects, and consider first such as are accidental (omens, prodigies, portents).

910. Omens, prodigies, and portents are to be regarded as the product of ages of experience. The observations of early men seem to them to show that certain appearances are followed by certain events, and the details of experience, handed down and interpreted by successive generations, are in the course of time sifted, systematized, and formulated. In savage and half-civilized communities divinatory signs are usually simple, drawn from appearances of familiar objects and occurrences. They become more complicated in civilized times—they are mingled with elaborate astrological ideas. Divination becomes a science for the practice of which a technical education is required. Belief in omens and other signs survives among the highest civilized peoples long after the conceptions on which they rest have been abandoned. The origin of signs among savage peoples may often be traced with more or less probability; in the case of such as survive in periods of high culture the origin is necessarily obscured by the lapse of time and can be surmised only by comparison with earlier conceptions.

The belief in such signs may be traced over a great part of the world. It is found among the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hindus, Chinese, Hebrews, Greeks, Romans, Arabians, and at a later time among the Celtic, Slavic, and Teutonic peoples.1601 At the present day it occurs most highly developed in Polynesia, Northern Africa, Southern India, and Central Asia; it is relatively unimportant in Western and Central Africa, North America, South America, and Australia. One difference between divination and magic thus appears to be that the latter is vigorous in savage communities that pay little attention to the former. Further collections of facts may require a modification of this statement; but, in general, it would seem that an organization of signs, demanding, as it does, orderly reflection on phenomena, is proper to communities that have advanced beyond the hunting and nomadic stages. For the rest, there are few objects or occurrences that have not been regarded at some time by some people as indications of divine will in respect to present, past, or future events.

911. A fair illustration of the early belief in omens is afforded by the divinatory system that prevails in Samoa and the neighboring group of islands.1602 It appears that all omens are derived either from the movements of animals that are regarded as incarnations of deities,1603 or from phenomena that are held to be produced immediately by deities. The flight of owls, bats, or rails, according to its direction, indicates the result of a battle or a war; the howling of a dog is a sign of coming misfortune; if a centipede crawls on the top of a mat it is a good omen, if on the bottom of a mat it is bad; it is unfortunate when a lizard crosses one's path; if a basket be found turned upside down in a road, this is a sign of evil; the way in which sacred stones fall to the ground is an indication of the future. The animals mentioned above (and there are many other such) are all regarded as incarnations of deities. So as to portents: loud thunder, taken to be the voice of the great god Tangaloa, is a good sign; the significance of lightning (which also is sent by the god) depends upon the direction taken by the flash. An eclipse is regarded as a presage of death. A similar system of interpretation of signs is found elsewhere. The Masai and the Nandi draw omens from the movements of birds.1604 In Ashantiland the cry of the owl means death.1605 When in Australia the track of an insect is believed to point toward the abode of the sorcerer by whom a man has been done to death, the conception is probably the same.

The modern Afghans hold that a high wind that continues three days is a sign that a murder has been committed.1606 Examples from Brazil, Borneo, New Zealand, Old Calabar and Tatarland are given by Tylor.1607 In the early Hebrew history it appears that a rustling in trees was looked on as a sign of divine intervention.1608

912. In ancient Babylonia and Assyria an elaborate system of interpretation of ordinary occurrences prevailed—the movements and appearances of various species of birds, of bulls, of dogs of all colors are noted, with minute interpretations.1609 The Greeks recognized omens in the acts of various animals, especially in the flight and cries of birds; so important were these last that the words for 'bird' came to be employed for 'omens from birds' and even simply for 'omens';1610 Aristophanes, laughing at the Athenians, declares that they called every mantic sign 'bird'.1611 Skepticism, however, appears in Hector's passionate rejection of the signs of birds and his declaration that the best omen is to fight for one's country.1612 A similar mantic prominence of birds appears in ancient Rome where the terms for the observation of birds (auspicium, augurium) came to signify 'omens' in general.

The preëminence thus accorded to birds was due perhaps to the fact that they move in a region above the earth, the larger species (οἰωνός) seeking the sky near the abode of the gods, as well as to the frequency and variety of their actions.1613 The feeling of direct contact with the deity appears in the significance attached to the movements of a sacrificial animal: if it approached the altar willingly, this, showing accord with the deity, was a good omen, and unwillingness was a bad omen.1614 Among the later Romans the entrance of a strange black dog into a house, the falling of a snake through the opening in the roof, the crowing of a hen were unfavorable signs which prevented the immediate undertaking of any new affair;1615 these were all unusual and therefore uncanny occurrences. Some of the animals that furnish omens are totems, and in such cases the totemic significance coalesces with that of the omen; the animal that appears to the young Sioux candidate as his manitu has both characters—it is the sign of divine acceptance and the embodiment of the divine patron.1616

913. Prodigies connected with the birth of children are numerous. The complete or incomplete character of the infant's body, various marks and colors, and the number produced at a birth have been carefully noted by many peoples. The birth of twins seems to have been more commonly regarded in savage and half-civilized communities either as a presage of misfortune (as being unusual and mysterious) or as a sign of conjugal unfaithfulness (as indicating two fathers, one of whom might be a god). Interpretations of births are given in Babylonian records.1617 Everywhere monstrous births, misshapen forms, and abnormal colors in the bodies of men and beasts have been regarded as indications of divine displeasure.

914. That the stars early attracted the attention of man is shown by the fact that constellations are recognized in some lower tribes—for example, in the New Hebrides Islands, among the Todas, the Masai, the Nandi, and elsewhere.1618 Since all heavenly bodies were regarded originally as divine, and later as controlled by divine beings, sometimes also as the abodes of the dead or as the souls of the dead, it was natural that astral movements should be looked on as giving signs of the will of the gods. Astronomy appears to have been pursued in the first instance not from interest in the natural laws governing the movements of sun, moon, and stars, but from belief in their divinatory significance. How far this study was carried on all over the ancient world we have no means of knowing; but, as far as the records go, it was the Babylonians that first reduced astral divination to the form of a science,1619 and it is probable that from them it spread over Western Asia and India, and perhaps into Europe. Babylonian and Assyrian documents contain many accurate statements of the appearances of heavenly bodies; and in the third or second century B.C., as we learn from the Book of Daniel, the term 'Chaldean' was synonymous with 'magician.' While astronomy was pursued by the Egyptians with great success, whereby they made a notable construction of the calendar, they seem not to have cultivated astrology, though they associated certain stars with certain gods and with lucky or unlucky days.1620

915. Of all divinatory methods astrology has played the greatest rôle in human history, and is still believed in and studied by not a few persons. It derived its prominence originally, no doubt, from the splendor and mystery of the sidereal heavens; the identification (by the Babylonians) of certain planets with certain deities gave it more definite shape. It was necessarily a learned pursuit, and, falling naturally into the hands of priestly bodies, was developed by them in accordance with the needs of the situation. Rules of interpretation were established that became more and more specific. In the early period of astrology it was concerning matters of public interest that information was sought—crops, wars, and the fortunes of the king as the head of the nation.1621 At a later time, but before the beginning of our era, in accordance with the growth of ethical individualism, the stars were interrogated for the destinies of private individuals;1622 the aspect of the heavens at the moment of birth, the horoscope, announced the fate of the nascent man.1623

In the hands of the Chaldeans astrology remained exclusively or largely a science of omens. An advance toward a higher conception, however, was made by their identification of certain planets with certain gods,1624 whereby the regularity and certainty of movement of the astral world were carried over to the world of divine Powers. When, in the centuries just preceding and following the beginning of our era, Chaldean astrology was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, it was organized by them in accordance with their philosophy, and it entered into alliance with all the higher religious tendencies of the period. In the unchangeableness of stellar movements the Stoics saw a principle substantially identical with their doctrine of fate. Along various lines (in Judaism and Christianity, and in the mysteries of Mithra and Isis) men were moving toward the conception of a single supreme ruler of the world, and astrology fell into line with this movement. The starry universe was held to be the controller of human life, worthy of worship, and able to call forth emotion. Thus astrology became a religion1625—it was adopted by learned and unlearned, its ethical and spiritual quality being determined by the character and thought of the various groups that professed it. For some centuries it was a religious power in the world; as a religious system it gave way gradually to more definite constructions, but it survived as a science long after it had ceased to be believed in as a life-giving faith.

The persistence of faith in it as a science is an additional illustration of men's demand for visible signs of the intervention of the deity in human affairs;1626 as often as certain supposed embodiments of the supernatural are discarded, others are taken up. The earlier philosophical views of the relation of the heavenly bodies to human life are now generally abandoned, and such belief in this relation as now exists has no scientific basis, but is founded on vague desire.

916. The words and actions of men and their normal peculiarities of bodily form have furnished comparatively few divinatory signs, the reason being, probably, that in early times animals and other nonhuman things arrested the attention of observers more forcibly, while in later times such acts and forms were more readily explained from natural conditions and laws. The palpitation of the eye, which seems sometimes to uneducated man to be produced by an external force, has been taken as a presage of misfortune. A burning sensation in the ear is still believed by some persons to be a sign that one is being talked about; in early stages of culture the sensation was regarded as a warning sent by the guardian spirit or some other superhuman being. Sneezing was once looked on as a happy omen: when Telemachus gave a resounding sneeze Penelope interpreted it as a sign that news of his father was at hand.1627 An act performed without ulterior purpose may be taken to symbolize some sort of fortune. When the Calif Omar sent an embassy to the Persian King Yezdegird summoning him to embrace Islam, the angry king commanded that a clod of earth should be brought and that the ambassadors should bear it out of the city, which they accordingly did; and this act was taken both by Arabs and by Persians as a presage of Moslem victory—the invaders had a portion of Persian soil.1628 An element of magic, however, may have entered into this conviction; the bit of soil was supposed, perhaps, to carry with it the whole land.

917. The belief in the sacredness or divinity of the human body has led to the search for divinatory signs in its parts. But it is only the hand that has been extensively employed in this way. The hand has offered itself as most available for divination, partly, perhaps, because of the variety and importance of its functions, partly because of the variety of lines it shows and the ease with which it may be examined. Chiromancy, or palmistry, has been developed into a science and has maintained itself to the present day; but it has largely lost its divinatory significance and has become a study of character, which is supposed to be indicated by the lines of the hand. In its divinatory rôle it has often been connected with astrology.

918. The preceding examples deal with occurrences that present themselves without human initiation. In certain cases the materials for divination are arranged by men themselves. In such methods there is always an appeal to the deity, a demand that a god shall intervene and indicate his will under the conditions prepared by men, the assumption being that the god has prepared the event or thing in question, and that, when properly approached, he will be disposed to give his worshipers the assistance desired. The casting of lots and similar random procedures have been common methods of divination the world over. The African Kafir diviner detects criminals by the fall of small objects used as dice. The Ashanti discover future events by the figures formed when palm wine is thrown on the ground, and from the nature of the numbers, whether even or odd, when one lets fall a handful of nuts. In a dispute the Yoruban priest holds in his hand a number of grass stalks, one of which is bent, and the person who draws the bent stalk is adjudged to be in fault.1629 The Hebrews had the official use of objects called "urim and thummim" (terms whose meaning is unknown to us), which were probably small cubes, to each of which was somehow attached an answer "yes" or "no," or the name of a person.

Thus, when David inquired whether he was to attack the Philistines, the answer seems to have been "yes."1630 When it was a question who had violated the taboo announced by Saul, the urim and thummim first decided that it was not the people but the royal family; and then, as between Saul and Jonathan, that it was the latter who was guilty.1631 According to the Book of Ezekiel the Chaldean King Nebuchadrezzar drew lots by arrows to determine what road he should take in a campaign.1632 The old Arabs employed a species of divination by arrows, which, when thrown down, by their position indicated the will of the gods; and in the division of the flesh of a beast slaughtered by a clan or group, the portions to be assigned to various persons were determined by the drawing of arrows.1633 Divination by lot was also largely employed by the Greeks and the Romans.1634 The method called "sortes vergilianae" is still in vogue; it was and is a custom among pious persons, Christian or Moslem, to learn the course that they are to take in an emergency by opening a Bible or a copy of the Koran at random and accepting the first words on which the eye falls as an indication of the divine will, the deity being supposed to direct the eye.1635

919. One of the commonest and most important methods of divination in antiquity was the examination of the entrails of animals (haruspication). Of this system there are a few examples among savage peoples,1636 but it has attained special significance only among the great civilized nations and especially among the Babylonians, the Etruscans, and the Greeks and Romans. The slaughtered animal was generally held to be itself sacred or divine, and, as it was offered to the deity, it was a natural belief that the god would indicate his will by the character of the inward parts, which were supposed to be particularly connected with the life of the animal. Of these animal parts the liver was regarded as the most important. The liver was for the Babylonians the special seat of thought, whether from its position or its size or from some other consideration we have no means of knowing. The explanation of the form and appearance of the liver became itself a separate science, and this science was developed with extraordinary minuteness by the Babylonians. The whole structure of the liver, together with the gall, bladder, and the ducts, was analyzed, and to every part, every line, and every difference of appearance a separate significance was assigned.

Thus hepatoscopy, demanding long training and influencing political action (and, doubtless, calling for ingenuity and tact in interpretations), assumed great importance in Babylonia and Assyria; and it was hardly less important among the Etruscans, the Greeks, and the Romans.1637 It is held by some scholars that Babylonia was the original home of the developed science, whence it passed into Greece and Italy.1638 It may be recognized in Babylonia in the third millennium B.C., and there is no improbability in the supposition that Babylonian influence was felt in Asia Minor and Eastern Europe; but, in view of the number of possibly independent centers of culture in this region in ancient times and the paucity of data, the question may be left open.

920. Other parts of the animal bodies also were employed in divination. Tylor1639 mentions the examination of the bones of the porcupine among North American Indians, the color giving indications as to the success of hunting expeditions. The shoulder blade, when put into the fire, showed by splits in it various kinds of fortune. The heart was of less significance in ancient thought than the liver, it being of less size, and its function in the circulation of the blood not being known. The brain also did not come, until a comparatively late period, to be regarded as the seat of the intellect.1640

Dreams. The importance attached all over the world to dreams as presages is a familiar fact. It would appear that among savage peoples a dream is regarded as representing an historical fact, the actual perception of an occurrence or a situation. It is believed that the mysterious inward thing, the soul, endowed with peculiar power, is capable, during sleep, of leaving the body and wandering to and fro;1641 why, then, in its journeys, should it not be able to see the plans of friends and enemies, and in general to observe the course of events? We do not know the nature of savage logic in dealing with these visions of the night, but some such line of reasoning as this, it seems probable, is in their minds. The soul, they hold, is an entity, possessing intellectual powers like those of the ordinary living man—it sees certain things, and its knowledge becomes the possession of the man when he awakes. Thus the soul in dreams is a watchman, on the lookout for what may help or harm the man.

Perhaps there is, even in low tribes, a vague feeling that it has extraordinary powers of perception; whether such a feeling, if it exists, is connected with a belief that, during sleep, the soul is freed from the limitations of the everyday corporeal man we are not able with our present data to say.1642 Savages often follow the suggestions made in dreams1643 (particularly when they are vivid) and are confirmed in their faith by occasional fulfillments of predictions; the mind, working during sleep on the observations made by day, may sometimes fall on situations that afterwards really appear, and a few such realizations are sufficient to establish a rule or creed.

922. This naïve conception of dreams as products of the soul's perception of realities survives to a greater or less extent among higher tribes and nations, but finally gives way, when some sort of theistic construction is reached, to the view that they are sent immediately by deities. An approach to this view appears in North America when, for example, a Pawnee Indian sees in a dream some being who gives him important information, though in the folk-tales nothing is said of the source of the dream.1644 A step in advance appears in the belief of the Ashanti, according to which the existence of a tutelary family deity is indicated in a dream;1645 it is, however, not clear whether or not they hold that the tutelary deity has himself suggested the dream. In the higher religions a dream is often sent by a patron deity as a prediction or for guidance in a coming emergency. Doubtless it was only in the case of specially distinct dreams and such as related to important matters that attention was paid to them—the deity intervened only in affairs that called for his special direction. Examples are numerous in the history of the great nations of antiquity.

The Egyptian King Merneptah in a time of great danger had a dream in which the god Ptah appeared to him and bade him banish fear;1646 and the Hebrew Yahweh is represented as having sent dreams to a king of Egypt (probably in the interests of the Hebrews) to warn him of a coming famine.1647 The Assyrian Ashurbanipal was favored with special communications from Ishtar, and the god Ashur in a dream ordered Gyges, King of Lydia, to submit to the Assyrian king.1648 In some documents of the Pentateuch Yahweh regularly announces his will in dreams to both Hebrews and non-Hebrews;1649 and a Hebrew writer of a later time (the third or second century B.C.) represents the God of Israel as giving Nebuchadrezzar an outline of the history of the rise and fall of the kingdoms of Western Asia and Greece.1650 A god might employ a dream for a less worthy purpose: Zeus sends a dream to Agamemnon to mislead him and thus direct the issue of the war.1651 So important for life did the Greeks conceive the dream to be that, as it would seem, they personified it.1652

Incubation. Divine direction by dreams was not always left to chance. The custom arose of sleeping near a shrine (engkoimesis, incubation) where, doubtless, after appropriate ritual preparation the god was expected to signify his will in a dream (his generally friendly feeling was assumed and the dream would be of the nature of an answer to prayer). This was one of the means employed by Saul when he desired to learn what would be the issue of the impending battle with the Philistines.1653 In Greece, and later in Italy, the most famous shrine of incubation was that of Asklepios (Aesculapius), which was widely resorted to and came to exert a good moral influence.1654 The renown of the shrine was doubtless increased by the fact that Asklepios was a god of healing.1655

923. As a dream was often obscure the services of a trained interpreter became necessary in order that the dream might be effective. The interpreters were magicians, priests, or sages1656—men in intimate association with deities and acquainted with their modes and vehicles of revelation;1657 dreams thus became equivalent to oracular responses. An interpreter would become famous in proportion to the number of fulfillments of his interpretations, and his god would share in the glory of his renown.1658 Of the particular conditions through which certain men and certain shrines attained special fame we have few details.

Oneiromancy, in unorganized form, was studied in very early periods of religious life. It shared in the general advance of thought, and in the course of time a traditional science of the explanation of dreams arose. There were records of experiences, particularly of notable fulfillments, and it became possible to make lists of dreams with interpretations;1659 these were written down and passed on from generation to generation, increasing in volume as they went. Such manuals have played no inconsiderable part in the life of the people.1660

924. Ordeals. Divination has played an important part in civil life as a means of determining the guilt or innocence of an accused person. From very early times ordeals of various sorts have been devised for securing a judicial opinion when ordinary means of investigation have failed. One of the simplest methods is to require an accused person to swear that he is innocent, the belief being that the god will avenge false swearing with immediate and visible punishment.1661 This method is employed by the Ashanti:1662 the accused is required to drink a certain decoction; if he is made sick by it this is proof of his innocence;1663 and if there be a question between two men, and one after drinking is made sick, the other is regarded as guilty, and executed. On the Lower Congo the accused swallows a pill made of a bark said to be poisonous; if he soon vomits it he is declared innocent, if not, he is adjudged guilty.1664 A similar procedure was employed in Samoa:1665 standing in the presence of representatives of the village god, the suspected person laying his hand on the object wishes that if he is guilty he may speedily die. Among the Hill people of Ceylon also this custom exists. Ordeals in Loango are described by Purchas.1666

925. Among the ancient nations the earliest example of an ordeal occurs in the code of Hammurabi (about 2000 B.C.). Here the accused is thrown into the sacred water, and if not drowned is declared innocent; he is protected by the deity.1667 The same principle appears in the old Hebrew ordeal: when a woman was accused of unfaithfulness to her husband the accused was made to drink sacred water; if she was innocent no bad consequences followed; if she was guilty she died.1668 In India, where various tests by fire, water, and food have been and are employed, the decision is sometimes as in the Hebrew procedure; sometimes (when the accused is thrown into the water) the principle (found elsewhere abundantly) is recognized that it is the innocent person that suffers and the guilty that is uninjured.1669 The ordeal as a civil process continued in Europe until the Middle Ages. In the submersion in water of a woman suspected of being a witch the principle of decision was the same as is now practiced in Ashantiland and India—if the woman was drowned it was a sign that she was innocent, but if she rose unharmed from the water she was adjudged guilty and was put to death.1670

926. The imprecation is similar to the ordeal. A man invokes the curse of the deity on his enemy, and it is supposed that such curse will bring its punishment.1671 A curse was regarded as an objective thing, which reached its object quite independently of guilt or innocence.1672 In Morocco a conditional curse is pronounced and is supposed to become effective if the wrong complained of is not righted.1673 These ordeals and imprecations were sometimes effective in fixing guilt; the dread of incurring the wrath of the deity sometimes forced a guilty person to confess, or his dread of the punishment produced signs of guilt. On the other hand, it is probable that just as often innocent persons were convicted and punished through such tests.

With all such systems of signs may be compared the Chinese quasi-science called Fung-Shui ('Wind and Water'), which determines proper sites for graves and for temples and other buildings by observations of the influences of the sky (moisture, warmth, wind, thunder), of waters and hills, and of the earth, and by the study of various magical combinations. Thus, it is held, it is possible in important undertakings to obtain the favor and support of the good Powers of the world. The site of a grave, affecting the future of the dead, is of especial significance, and the Fung-Shui interpreters, regularly trained men, levy what contributions they please from surviving relatives, sometimes purposely prolonging their investigations at a ruinous cost to the family of the deceased.1674 The system sprang from the Chinese conception of heaven and earth as the controlling Powers of the world; but, neglecting the higher side of this conception, it has sunk into a fraudulent trade.1675

927. Oracles. As men went to the tents or palaces of chiefs or kings for guidance in ordinary matters, so they went to the dwelling places of superhuman Powers for direction in matters that were beyond human ken. Such appeal to divine or quasi-divine beings began early in religious history. In Borneo and the islands of Torres Straits the abodes of skulls are places from which responses are obtained;1676 speaking heads are found there and elsewhere. The Sunthals of West Bengal have the ghost of a specially revered ancestor as a dispenser of superhuman knowledge.1677 When local gods arose every local shrine, it is probable, contained an oracle.1678 The shrines of the great gods naturally acquired special prominence, their oracles were consulted by kings and other leaders on affairs of importance, and thus came to exert a great influence on the course of events.1679 The stars also, though they had no earthly habitations, were consulted through their interpreters. Such astrological oracles, as used by men like Posidonius, the teacher of Cicero, might be morally inspiring; but when, at a later time, the consultation of heavenly bodies fell into the hands of wandering "Chaldeans" (who might be of any nation) it became a system of charlatanry, and thus morally debasing.1680

The greater nations of antiquity differed considerably among themselves in regard to the part played in their lives by oracles. In general, the organization of oracular shrines grew in proportion to the rise of manlike gods—deities whose relation to men was socially intimate. In Egypt such shrines were not of prime importance;1681 the functions of the gods were mainly governmental—the most human of them, Osiris, became an ethical judge rather than a personal friend. The pre-Mohammedan Arabs did not create great gods, and their resort to local divinities was commonly in order to ask whether or not a proposed course of action was desirable; the answer was "yes" or "no."1682 The famous warrior and poet, Imru'l-Kais, desiring to go to war to avenge his father's death, received at a shrine three times a negative answer, whereupon, hurling abusive epithets at the god, he exclaimed, "If it were your father, you would not say 'no.'" Such independence was probably rare; most men would have accepted the divine decision.